The Mix : What are people talking about today?

Dennis O’Neil: Comic Books Even Teachers Can Love

toon_graphicsThat was the headline above a New York Times story that ran in the paper’s Art section…

Hold on! Before we go any further, let’s think about this. The Times headline implies that at least a substantial number of teachers don’t like comics. Not true, at least not in my experience. Marifran, who taught for 50 years, used comics I brought home as classroom prizes in both a Catholic school in Brooklyn and a public school here in Nyack. She got no negative feedback from either parents or school officials. And the kids seemed to like being rewarded in this way. Comics were a small but welcome addition to her workplaces.

Then why did the august gray lady of American journalism imply that comics and lesson plans might be a bad mix? Maybe because once upon a time, somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 years ago, comics did have a bum rep among certain citizens, probably including teachers, especially those who read editorials, heeded clergy and other authority figures, including a New York City psychiatrist. And, while we’re on the subject of authority figures, these citizens thought that if United States congressmen said something was a menace to our youth and even convened hearings to investigate, well, by golly, it was a menace, whatever it was.

As far as I can tell, comic books’ days as scapegoats and quarries of witch hunts were pretty much done by the late 50s and early 60s, when Julius Schwartz refashioned a lot of long dormant superheroes and Stan Lee changed editorial attitudes and gave comics an aura of hipness and, dare we utter it, of sophistication. But sometimes old convictions refuse to die, especially if those holding the convictions have no reason to question them. So, yeah, I’m sure there still exist folk who believe comic books to be venues for wickedness, but there can’t be many of them.

Which brings us back to the Times piece. It concerns a new publishing venture, Toon Graphics, and its founder, Francoise Moulay. Ms Moulay is offering comics to schools as tools to help kids learn. She believes that comics can help teach reading because youngsters, unlike adults, because they are used to extract meaning from information. “That’s how they make sense of the world,” Ms Moulay told the Times reporter. “Comics are good diagrams for how to extract meaning from print.”

That makes comics a natural extension of what psychologists say is something infants do before very early in life, make crude, preverbal narratives – stories – to deal with the continual barrage of information their senses are providing. They begin to assemble cause-and-effect scenarios and soon all that… stuff isn’t so scary because they’ve begun to understand it. Then they grow up and acquire language and… well, it can go a lot of ways from there. Maybe they write King Lear. Or go to work for the New York Times. Or contribute to ComicMix.

 

Mike Gold: Sinful Sin City

I had a whole rant plotted out in my mind, but when my fingers hit the keyboard I decided against it. Perhaps I’m mellowing in my antiquity. I hope not, as being not-mellow is how I make my living. Maybe it’s because I’m going to this weekend’s Baltimore Comic Con, always a wonderful event, and I’m awash in breathless anticipation.

Well, either way, I’ve got a deadline and ComicMix’s editor-in-chief is an asshole (not to be confused with this column’s editor, Adriane Nash, who is not an asshole) and I’ve got all these Sin City thoughts attacking my brain like anti-bodies at a clown orgy and I’m willing to share. Let’s see how long it takes for me to become non-mellow.

Fellow ComicMixer Martha Thomases and I saw Sin City: A Plot To Kill With last week. I enjoy going to the movies with Martha because, together, we tend to like just about everything we see. We have a spirited and usually positive conversation afterwards, often at the fabled Katz’s Delicatessen on New York’s lower east side, where we both enjoy the pickles.

This time, well, not so much. Maybe it’s because we were creatively filling time before the Doctor Who season debut. Maybe because we went to an Italian restaurant where they didn’t serve pickles, although the garlic bread was great. But, you see, I’m spending all this time talking about food instead of the movie. That alone should tell you something.

It’s not that A Plot To Kill With was a lousy movie. It was, essentially, a remake of the first one. The rule of thumb for sequels and remakes is “what about this is different from the original and, at the same time, worthwhile.” There are plenty of sequels that equal or exceed the source material: From Russia With Love, Godfather II, Spider-Man II (the real one, not the doppelganger featuring the Flying Nun), and quite a few others. But if “they” were to do a sequel to The Maltese Falcon (and they sort of did, and it sucked) it would have to pick up a dozen years later with Humphrey Bogart waiting for Mary Astor to get out of prison.

Oh, wait. They did that. It was called Blues Brothers 2000.

Sin City Il Secondo brought us nothing new. The Frank Miller comics-to-movies style is no longer new. It’s been used in most subsequent Frank Miller films. These days, I watch that stuff and I wonder if Lynn Varley gets royalties. Most of the multiple plotlines simply vanish into a haze that is more boring than it is confusing. There’s some truly fine performances from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Powers Boothe, Dennis Haysbert, Christopher Meloni and Christopher Lloyd, but storywise I’m reminded of what happened when they poured acid on the Toons in Who Killed Roger Rabbit.

Worse still, the amazing thing about the first movie – the surprisingly powerful performance from Mickey Rourke – was just lame. His character was predictable and not engaging and, even worser, his Marv prosthetics weren’t as impressive as they were in the first movie. He looked like he was wearing a Ben Cooper mask.

Sin City Le Deuxième was one of those unfortunate movies that got worse upon reflection. When we left the theater we didn’t particularly feel we wasted our time. With each passing day, that feeling faded and by now I want my time back.

I looked up the opening weekend box office receipts. Sin City Zwei pulled in $24.00. That means: a) we didn’t see it in 3-D, and b) we were the only ones in North America who paid to get in.

And that means the entire rest of North America is smarter than we were.

 

Box Office Democracy: “The November Man”

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There’s a moment in the first half of The November Man when Pierce Brosnan’s Peter Devereaux is having a tense conversation with his former protégée David Mason (Luke Bracey) and he says “You can either be a human or a killer of humans” and that’s a cool line and it caps off a tense scene but it has nothing at all to do with anything that happens in the film.  Instead The November Man is a movie that strings together a number of spy-action clichés to make a movie that isn’t unenjoyable by any means but doesn’t provide anything particularly original.  It’s as if Brosnan, an executive producer on this movie, has spent the years since he exited the Bond franchise watching all of the spy movies he could find with a notebook trying to find a way back in to the genre that left him behind.

There are some great sequences in this film.  Brosnan doesn’t, and maybe never did, have the physicality to be a believable action hero in this day and age but they structure things very well so he can be the smartest guy in the movie and he can do things by being in the right place and by getting the jump on people.  It’s a little bit like The Bourne Identity crossed with a Droopy cartoon but I mean that in the most flattering way possible.  Younger men run around and do little bits of parkour and whatnot and when they get to a corner Brosnan is there to hit them in the face with a pipe or a shovel or his elbow or whatever.  It’s a breath of fresh air after watching Sylvester Stallone and Harrison Ford pretend they could keep up with 20 year-olds two weeks ago.

The plot is nonsense.  There are dialogue scenes to keep the action scenes apart but there’s no rhyme or reason and a disregard for continuity even from scene to scene.  There is a sequence late in the film where a young girl is kidnapped and it’s enough to make the younger agent to question his loyalty to the CIA but he saves those reservations for way after he kidnaps the girl with no apparent reservation off screen.  Devereaux is alternatively all about not having attachment to anyone who can be used against him and having tons and tons of friends and assorted other allies.  He even picks up more along the way.  The movie also features an astounding amount of violence to seemingly innocent people without asking us to take anyone to task for it.  Brosnan cuts the femoral artery of a completely innocent woman and doesn’t even seem to feel bad about it.  She never comes back to the movie either, for all we know he murdered her.

This is part of a much larger disregard The November Man has for all its female characters.  With the exception of the femme fatale Russian assassin none of the female characters do anything competently; they are pawns to be acted upon by the stronger male characters.  They can’t fight, they can’t do their jobs, and they can’t even run or hide effectively.  The incompetent female CIA operative sort of gets a chance to get revenge on the man who treated her so badly but she does it by making a phone call so a man can do it for her.  Olga Kurylenko, the female lead, is constantly a victim and the further we get in to the film the more we dive in to the depths of her character’s victimhood.  She gets a brief moment of comeuppance against her assailants towards the end but the revenge on the man who ruined her life is reserved for a man.  It’s a shame that Brosnan has left the Bond franchise but he can’t help but keep making his girls pretty plot devices.

The Point Radio: HAVEN Anything But Safe This Season

HAVEN returns to SyFy for Season Five with tighter continuity and some pretty big story lines. Stars Emily Rose and Lucas Bryant talk about what’s on the way, plus we lose WIL WHEATON but it looks like we regain THE TICK!

THE POINT covers it 24/7! Take us ANYWHERE on ANY mobile device (Apple or Android). Just  get the free app, iNet Radio in The  iTunes App store – and it’s FREE!  The Point Radio  – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE  – and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

REVIEW: Young Justice

YoungJusticeBluray1DC Comics has always had a special place in its heart for the teen sidekicks and since the 1960s, there have been numerous books dedicated to their collaborative efforts. Little wonder then, that Cartoon Network would want series based on Teen Titans and Young Justice. While the former reduced them to far younger incarnations, the latter took the Peter David-written comic and expanded its scope in vastly satisfying ways. Young Justice ran a mere two seasons but retains an ardent fan following so it’s nice to see the entire first season out now as a two-disc Blu-ray package.

The show was developed for the cable channel by former DC assistant editor Greg Weisman, who discovered his forte with animation as witnessed by the wild success of his Gargoyles. Here, he’s partnered with Brandon Vietti, no stranger to translating comics to cartoons. Their premise takes the teens – Robin, Aqualad, Kid Flash, and Arrowette  – and sees them declare their independence from their mentors and are turned into The Team, covert operatives. The android Red Tornado watches over them in the JLA’s original mountain HQ and they receive missions from Batman so there’s a tight connection to the Justice League which is expanded throughout the first season.

Early on, the teens are on a case within Cadmus and discover the clone named Superboy and his adjustment to life away from the lab is a major thread through the series. The team is rounded out with the arrival of M’gann M’orzz, Miss Martian.

Interestingly, rather than trying to justify their choices to play fast and loose with DC Universe print continuity, the producers declared up front that these adventures occur on Earth-16 in the New 52 multiverse and I’m okay with that, since it shuts down the critics really fast. This certainly explains the new brown-skinned Aqualad, created by Vietti and Weisman, but does not justify his inclusion in the New 52. With that said, there are plenty of nice touches to the larger fraternity of heroes such as Zatara’s appearance in the opening episode. There’s a lovely nod to original Titans as the new team takes on Mister Twister. Episode 10 is touching as Superboy and Miss Martian take on the Conner Kent and Megan Morse identities as they begin their first day of school, meeting Super Friends’ Wendy and Marvin, one-tome Titans Mal Duncan and Karen Beecher, while their teacher is Lucas “Snapper” Carr.

Reviewing these 26 episodes is interesting to watch seeds planted early finally sprout or connections other DC animated series are made clear. Additionally, it’s fun to see familiar behind-the-scenes names such as director Jay Oliva who graduated from episodic stories to the feature animated films including the recent Assault on Arkham. Peter David gets his due by contributing a few episode scripts as well.

Weisman does a nice job with the themes teens experience such as love, jealously heightened emotions and the desire to live up the adults’ expectations while still trying forge a unique identity. He also has a clear through-line for the stories so the chronology ticks off days at a time and is internally consistent unlike so many other animated shows. Secrets that have been introduced previously come into play in the penultimate episode which also sees Milestone’s Rocket join the team. Then comes the season one finale which brings many threads together and reveals Vandal Savage being behind much of the trouble. There’s fighting but also a 16-hour gap when Batman, Hawkwoman, John Stewart, Martian Manhunter, Superman, and Wonder Woman were absent and their whereabouts helps set the stage for season two, when the series was renamed Young Justice: Invasion.

While not the best of the DC animated fare, it is among the top five shows and despite its fans does not get its just due. Rewatching these, I was reminded how much fun this series was and it looks great on high definition disc. There are no extras, but that’s par for Warner Archives.

Emily S. Whitten’s Grand SDCC Adventure – LEGO Batman 3 Edition!

The LEGO Batman 3 video game will be released in retail stores in North America on November 11, 2014, and it sounds like it’s going to be so much fun. Obviously as part of the LEGO video game franchise, it will feature the usual enjoyment to be had in playing that set of games; but on top of that, the story sounds cool, and everything the cast and crew said about it at SDCC makes it sound like it’s going to be the best LEGO Batman game yet. If you don’t believe me, you can watch three exciting and hilarious trailers for the game here. And you can check out my SDCC interviews below!

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here to see Travis Willingham (Superman, Hawkman, Booster Gold) and Laura Bailey (Wonder Woman, Catwoman) talk about why everyone loves the LEGO video games, what it’s like doing multiple voices in the same project, their favorite versions of the characters they play, and favorite lines from the game.

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here to watch Troy Baker (Batman) discuss what it’s like to voice Batman and his Batman fandom, his favorite character relationships in the game, why he’s looking forward to playing the game, who else he’d like to voice from the Bat-verse, and what experiences made him a stronger actor.

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here to hear Arthur Parsons (Game Director) share how the previous LEGO games have informed LEGO Batman 3, cool things they’ve gotten to explore in this game, fun characters we’ll see, and awesome game mechanics.

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here to see Josh Keaton (Green Lantern, Shazam) & Scott Porter (Aquaman, Superboy) chat about what it’s like coming back to play Hal Jordan again, Green Lantern’s role in this game’s story, the dynamic of the voice acting community, why Aquaman is fun to play, and what versions of the characters inspired them when making the game.

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here to see Adam West (!!!!!) discuss what it’s like to have been known for Batman for so many years, why he loves Batman, his favorite lines from LEGO Batman 3, his favorite Batman villain and which villain he’d like to play, being the character of “Adam West” in so many things, what he’d want to be sure was in his utility belt, and much more.

(Nota bene: I know the sound quality on the Adam West video isn’t great. We do what we can in crowded press rooms. In case you’d rather listen to it with a better sound quality, click here for the audio version.)

And until next time, Servo Lectio!

New Who Review – “Into the Dalek”

“Demons run when a Good Man goes to war,” went the ancient line.  But the problem is, The Doctor is no longer sure he’s a good man.  Further problem is, neither is Clara.  So The Doctor’s not quite sure what he’s going to do when he’s invited to go…

INTO THE DALEK
By Phil Ford and Steven Moffat
Directed by Ben Wheatley

Human rebel fighter Journey Blue is about to have her ship destroyed by a Dalek saucer when The Doctor saves her by materializing the ship around her, a move for which he expects and demands a thank you.  Returning her back to her command ship, he’s quickly arrested, until Journey tells them he’s a Doctor…which is lucky because they have a patient.  The patient is a Dalek, who is malfunctioning.  As in, it has become good – it is raving that the Daleks must be defeated.

The Doctor retrieves Clara, who is on Earth, having just met Danny Pink, new teacher at Coal Hill School.  The Doctor and his companion are miniaturized so they can physically enter the wounded Dalek and fix it.  The Dalek is suffering from a radiation leak in its power source that was causing its mind to open to new ideas.  Witnessing the birth of a star, it recognized it as beautiful and had a epiphany.  Life will win – no matter how many stars the Daleks have destroyed, new ones are born, in greater number.  The Doctor has a fleeting hope that if he could heal this Dalek and still keep it “good,” he could turn the tide of the future.

Alas, once the radiation leak is fixed, the Dalek’s systems come back on line and it reverts to form.  But Clara insists there more they can do, and with the help of a couple of clever things, they attempt to awaken the goodness this Dalek experienced for just a moment of its horrific life.

All told, and episode that came close to some great moments, but mostly. only close.  It was a story that served to illuminate the relationship between The Doctor and The Daleks in a new way, a connection that deserved a few more lines than it got.  It opened up a possibility for a couple of returning characters, and showed us more of The Doctor’s new, cold demeanor.  I enjoyed it, but it could have been so much more.

THE MONSTER FILES – It’s the Daleks.  You could walk up to any drunken Sterno bum in the UK and they could tell you who they are.  At this point, a fair amount of American bums could.  Bork on Skaro as the end result of a war of attrition between the Kaleds and the Thals, battle-scarred scientist Davros mutated sample of his people’s DNA into what he declared was their final, perfect form (a tentacled blob of flesh that hates everybody) and put them into wee, almost indestructible tanks.

The Doctor met the Daleks in his second televised adventure, and there’s little argument that Terry nation’s creation was what sent the popularity of the show into orbit.  They’ve been back too many times to try to calculate.  The show tried to stop using them twice, once in a story that somewhat paralleled this one, but the allure of such a perfect enemy (not to mention the requisite ratings) is ever too tempting.

WELL EXCUUUUUSE ME – The Daleks almost didn’t make it into the new series, and it’s all comedian Steve Martin’s fault.  He was to appear in Looney Tunes: Back in Action as the head of the Acme Corporation.  There’s a scene in a secret government base where a bunch of aliens escape and wreak havoc.  Being a big Doctor Who fan, Steve thought it would be funny if one of them was a Dalek.  Warner Bros contacted the BBC for permission, and someone at the BBC gave it.  Problem: the BBC don’t own the Daleks, the Terry Nation estate does (Insert long tirade about how much better creators’ rights are handled in other countries here).

The estate was very put out that this was done, and a couple years later when the new series was in pre-production, they considered refusing permission to use the iconic monsters.  Steve Martin wrote a letter to the executors of the estate, personally apologizing for the mess-up.  The estate relented, and The Doctor got to face his greatest enemy again. And again.

The Dalek antibodies are technically the new monster for the episode, and they serve the same purpose as ones in a human body do – stopping invading organisms from damaging anything.  We saw antibody machines in the Teselecta in Let’s Kill Hitler, serving largely the same purpose they did here – to provide an additional threat.  The City of the Exxilons created antibodies to protect itself in the Pertwee adventure Death to the Daleks.

GUEST STAR REPORT  – Phil Ford (Co-writer) has a long history with the new series. He wrote the animated adventure Dreamland, as well as the Tennant adventure Waters of Mars. When Russell T Davies began The Sarah Jane Adventures, Phil worked with him, moving up to head writer for series 2.  He’s most recently worked with RTD on Wizards vs Aliens.  He was also the main writer for the recent CGI remake of classic Supermarionation series Captain Scarlet.

Samuel Anderson (Danny Pink) like most British actors (remember, there’s only 47 of them) has an interesting Venn diagram with other Doctor Who stars.  He was on Emmerdale which also featured Jenna Coleman, and Gavin and Stacey which starred James Corden, a.k.a. Craig Owens from The Lodger and Closing Time.

Michael Smiley (Colonel Morgan Blue) has appeared in several of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s collaborations, including Spaced and two third of the Cornetto Trilogy.  He was Benny Deadhead on Luther, and was in BBC America’s series Ripper Street.

BACKGROUND BITS AND BOBS – Trivia and production details

“Good idea for a movie” – Hanging a lampshade on a classic trope takes the curse off it.  Aside from the obvious, the Fantastic Voyage (and Innerspace) plot has been done on almost every science fiction show you can think of, not to mention plenty of cartoon series.  Heck, it’s been done on the show already: The Doctor was able to shrink clones of himself and Leela into his own brain to fight The Invisible Enemy, and fellow Time Lord Drax shrinks himself and The Doctor in The Armageddon Factor.  Just a little way back the Teselecta had a crew of shrunken humans  as it caught criminals through time.

“He was dead already” – This is another aspect of the more “alien” feel of the new Doctor. Gone, gone is the “I’m so sorry” mindset of Tennant who would sturm and drang over each being he couldn’t save, this Doctor is pragmatic, to point of being callous.

“I saw beauty” – in the adventure Asylum of the Daleks, we learned that the Daleks see beauty in hatred.  “Perhaps that is why we has always had trouble killing you,” the leader Dalek then theorized.  This Dalek saw what it recognized as true beauty in the birth of a star, but at the end of the episode, it sees the hatred The Doctor has for the Daleks, and his head is turned again to that which he has recognized as beauty for so long.

“The Doctor is not the Daleks” – This moment, and this scene, really needed a bit more emphasis.  As I’ve said before, The Daleks largely defined what kind of show Doctor Who was to be.  Sydney Newman had a “No bug-eyed-monsters” ban on the show, initially seeing the series as educational in nature, visiting historical moments to teach history of a sort to kids.  Once The Daleks hit as big as they did, the focus of the show shifted, away from the pure historical adventures and on to the fantastic.  It’s in this speech that that “definition” of The Doctor is applied to the character as well.  It acknowledges that before meeting the Daleks, The Doctor didn’t know what he wanted to do, or what kind of person he wanted to be.  He realized if there was an evil this great in the world, there had to be a good that great to combat it.

“You are a good Dalek” – The sheer hatred The Doctor has for the Daleks was made clear in the Eccleston episode Dalek.  In it, the lone Dalek in Henry van Statten’s collection listens to The Doctor’s wish that it “just die” and says “You would make a good Dalek.”

The parallels between that episode and this are numerous – a lone Dalek, broken and damaged, repaired by The Doctor (or Rose in the first of the two) and then being forced to combat it.  Both point out exactly how powerful a single Dalek is.

“If I can turn one Dalek, I can turn all of them. I can save the future.” –This is not the first time The Doctor has tried something like this.  In The Evil of the Daleks, The Doctor is pressed into finding the “Human Factor,” the mysterious brew of ingenuity, creativity and will to succeed that if added to the Dalek mind, would render them able to win any fight.  The Doctor, however, injects (infects, if you will) a series of Daleks with the human attributes of freedom, the desire to question authority and a grasp of justice, creating an army of  “Human Daleks” which immediately begin fighting with the “real” Daleks, a battle that The Doctor called “The final end.”  Indeed, it was supposed to be – that was supposed to be the last Dalek story, and it was for about five years, into the Pertwee years.  Genesis of the Daleks was also intended to be a “final” Dalek story, and like Evil, started a multi-year Dalek-free period, ending with Destiny of the Daleks.

“Gretchen Alison Carlisle. Do something good and name it after me.”

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And henceforth, this Dalek’s name is Gretchen Alison Carlisle.

“I just wish you hadn’t been a soldier” – The Doctor’s disdain for soldiers and the military mindset was set in stone back in the Pertwee years.  He would constantly mock the small-minded literalness of soldiers, most members of UNIT, and The Brigadier in particular.  Tennant got a bunch of good digs in during The Sontaran Stratagem.  Tying into the cold nature of this new Doctor, his disdain is much more absolute.

BIG BAD WOLF REPORT – Missy is back, here meeting brave soldier Gretchen for a splosh of tea.  So the initial thought that she’s collecting The Doctor’s enemies is incorrect.  It now appears she’s collecting people who have died because of The Doctor.  While the jury is still out on whether the clockwork droid died at his own hand in last week’s adventure, Gretchen clearly sacrificed herself to make sure The Doctor’s plan worked.

Near the end of Tennant’s run, The Doctor is thinking about his life while chatting in a cafe with Wilfrid Mott (Bernard Cribbins).  “I’ve killed,” he said “But then I got clever – I convinced people to kill themselves.”  What we are seeing here are people who are the victims of The Doctor’s cleverness.  Depending on which side Missy is on, both of these people so far could be talked into believing they were responsible for saving the lives of countless people by a hero, or that they were callously killed by a madman.

“I thought you might have a rule against soldiers” – Clara clearly doesn’t, but one wonders how much this budding relationship with Danny Pink will be colored and affected by The Doctor and his mindset against soldiers.  Danny will be playing a much more active role in the proceedings in the near future; it’ll be interesting to see if he’ll be more of an Ian Chesterton type of fellow on the TARDIS… or a Turlough.

– NEXT TIME ON DOCTOR WHO Don’t you worry, never fear –  Robot of Sherwood will soon be here, namely this weekend.

Mindy Newell: The Spider-Woman Scandal – A Different View

sexy-sue-storm-6363206The rabbis of the Talmudic period debated two contradictory versions of Creation related in the Book of Genesis (Bereisheet in Hebrew). The first version of Creation actually referred to Adam’s first wife, Lilith, who was made at the same time as Adam from the dust of the Earth. But Lilith believed herself to be equal to Adam because God had shaped her from the dust of the Earth and had blown the Holy Spirit – the soul – into her form at the same He made Adam. This displeased Adam, so God replaced her with Eve, who was made from one of Adam’s ribs while he slept, so that she would always be dependent and subservient to him.

I have a confession to make.

I’m not as disturbed by that butt shot of Spider-Woman as are many of my good friends and various pros in the comics industry, including my pal and fellow columnist Martha Thomases here at ComicMix.

As my good friend and fellow columnist here at ComcMix pretty much summed up my feelings about that variant cover of Spider-Woman #1 by erotic artist Milo Manara, sex sells in corporate America; the biggest example I can think of right now is the increasingly pornographic pictures of the women in Sports Illustrated annual swimsuit issue, which is always their biggest issue. Way back when – 1977 – Cheryl Tiegs modeled a crocheted swimsuit that – gasp! – showed her nipples, it raised eyebrows… and more than that for some, if you know what I mean. Today, that picture is considered tame. There is even a video on YouTube in which the photographer, Walter Ioosso, and Tiegs talk about how that now iconic photo was considered “nothing, a “throw-away” shot at the end of the day.

Buzzfeed posted a video on its site back in March 2014 in which sexualized men in three commercials shot by Doritos, GoDaddy.com, and Hardee’s replace sexualized women. I suggest checking it out and forming your own opinion – but, especially in the Doritos ad, the overall effect for me is of humor, not sexiness.

Why is that? Why doesn’t that cover disturb me as much as it does other women in this field? Why do I mostly feel envious of the models in Sports Illustrated? (And also, it must be said, a little sad that the days in which I looked incredibly hot in a bikini are pretty much behind me, no pun intended, even though I still look pretty damn good for a woman coming up on her 61st birthday.)

It has been said that the female body is inherently more attractive to the human eye, i.e, our brains. This has something to do with the fact that, anatomically – and as more than one artist has explained to me – it is made up of curves and arcs and circles rather than the hard lines of rectangles and triangles and squares. So maybe that’s part of the answer, because I, like most women, heterosexual or not, do appreciate a beautiful woman’s body – though I don’t know if all straight women are comfortable openly expressing that appreciation. Obviously, I am.

It may also be that at some level I’m reacting to all those commercials that I watched in the late 50s and early 60s in which a housewife, girdled and brassiered up the wazoo, mopped floors in a dress and high heels and a stiff bouffant hairdo. I mean, maybe the freely naked and sensual female body doesn’t offend me because at some level in my pre-adolescent brain I resented that, as a girl, I had to be trussed up like a turkey ready for roasting at Thanksgiving to be considered appealing.

The other thing is, American society is still, in many way, a Puritan society, i.e., sex is bad, and women and men should only “do it” to procreate. You know what I mean – that whole “a woman is creature easily tempted by the Devil, we all carry Eve’s sin within us, we must fight this urge and bow to the wisdom of men, first as a daughter, then as a wife” crap.

And yet at the same time the erotic S & M novel Fifty Shades Of Grey sold bazillions of copies and Tupperware parties have been replaced by “sex toy” parties – the most profitable being held in the Bible Belt region of the country, home of the “women as original sin” theology. And though last summer former Disney girl Miley Cyrus and her “twerking” aroused the ire of uptight citizens…

This year Ms. Cyrus used that notoriety at the MTV Video Awards to raise – sell – awareness of the plight of the homeless and was lauded for it.

So which is it?

Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman, changed her Fantastic Four uniform to show off her boobs and her body. Was it just a sexist change by the artist, or an “I am woman, hear me roar” celebration of everything that she is? “Hey, Reed, get your head out of the Negative Zone and appreciate this brainy babe with the bodacious ta-tas!” And if you don’t, well, I’m moving on.” I mean, did the costume make her less powerful, or more?

So on one hand, yes, that shot of Spider-Woman with her butt up in the air is about anything but power. And yet, on the other hand, it is all about power. Embracing what you’ve got and who you are. For as Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) said to Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford) in Working Girl:

 “I’ve got a head for business and a bod for sin. Is there anything wrong with that?”

 

John Ostrander: Telling The Story

We distinguish “pop culture” from “High Culture” usually because the main objective of “pop culture” is to entertain while “High Culture” looks into the human condition. It can entertain and should. Tragedy should entertain but in ways that are different from, say, Guardians of the Galaxy. But that is not its primary purpose.

That said, pop culture can also look into the human condition, into the world around us, and “hold a mirror up to nature.” That line is from Shakespeare who is very High Culture now but in his day was disparaged by some as being “too popular.” He appealed to the groundlings – those in the cheap seats – and that is part of the reason, I believe, that he is still so playable today. He knew that to reach someone’s mind and heart you first had to get their attention. The best way was to tell them a story.

That was a lesson that was also taught to me by our own Denny O’Neil. He has been a large-scale influence in my life. I was a fan when he wrote some seminal stories in the Green Lantern/Green Arrow book. The Green Lantern series had low numbers at that point and he was given an opportunity to write it; I once read that he liked the assignment because it was no fail. If he saved the book, that was great. If it got cancelled anyway, management would assume that the book was in a downward spiral and couldn’t be saved. In a way, he couldn’t lose. So he added Green Arrow, got Neal Adams as artist, and took a new path.

That has also influenced my career path; I liked taking on the B list characters. You could play with them, change them, without too much objections by the Higher Ups. You could take chances you might not be able to do with flagship titles. Don’t get me wrong; I would have loved to get a crack at a regular Superman or Batman gig (I did write some stories with the characters but never a regular book) but I found The Spectre to be wide open and Tom Mandrake and I crafted over 60 issues of which I am proud. It’s been one of the highlights of my career.

While ultimately Green Lantern/Green Arrow did get cancelled, Denny set a standard. He taught me that you could write about important subjects, about the issues surrounding that time, and create something that entertained as well as make you think. He addressed racism, drugs, even the environment (among other topics); that wasn’t being done at the time. He showed me what the potential of the medium could be.

He’s never forgotten, however, that the purpose of Pop Culture is to entertain. We were working on a project together with me as writer and he as editor. The purpose of the project was very definitely to make a comment on the subject of guns and gun violence. His direction was very clear. He told me that, in comics, “You can say anything you want but first you have to tell a story.” This wasn’t a pulpit and preaching isn’t narrative. Our first job was to tell a good story. That’s what the reader was paying to get. That was the job. It still is.

 

Emily S. Whitten’s Grand SDCC Adventure: Gotham Edition

(Editor’s Note: As noted in this space last Tuesday, for the next li’l bit we’ll be running BRAND-NEW Emily S. Whitten columns on Tuesday mornings and on Saturday afternoons! This being Saturday afternoon – Eastern USA time – here we go!)

Batman is one of DC Comics’ greatest characters, and part of what makes Batman great is his supporting cast, his rogues gallery, and the whole mood and setting of Gotham, the city that surrounds him and, in part, defines him. I’ve always loved seeing portrayals of Gotham, both in print and on screen, so I’m definitely looking forward to the new TV show Gotham (premiering September 22). Not only is the show supposed to feature the city as a character, but it’s also going to be examining the origins and psychology behind many famous characters from the Bat-verse along the way. The show focuses on Jim Gordon (later to be The Commissioner, and always one of my favorite Bat-verse characters) and his “rise to prominence” in Gotham City before Batman arrives on the scene. It also features young versions of Bruce (of course), The Penguin, Poison Ivy, Catwoman, The Riddler, and ostensibly more. Sounds good to me!

At SDCC I got to talk to some of the cast and crew of Gotham, and I’m pretty excited by what I’ve heard about the show so far. To share in my excitement, check out the interviews below!

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here to watch actor Donal  Logue (Detective Harvey Bullock) discuss Bullock’s role in the police department and Gotham, his relationship with Jim Gordon, the difference between working in a comics world versus other shows he’s done, villains he’s excited to see show up in Gotham, and the importance of honoring the Batman legacy for fans.

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here to see actress Jada Pinkett Smith (Fish Mooney) show off her favorite prop, talk about what it’s like to be a new character in the Batman world and a strong female character and focal point in the male-dominated world of Gotham, and discuss Fish as the progenitor for a lot of Gotham’s villains.

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here to see actress Erin Richards  (Barbara Kean) talk about her role as Jim Gordon’s fiancée, her favorite part of the set, what she loves about the Batman series, the city as a character, and how female characters shine on the show.

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here to watch actor Robin Lord Taylor (Oswald Cobblepot) discuss becoming the Penguin, his character’s relationships with Fish Mooney, Bruce, and other characters, and the background of the Cobblepot family.

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here to listen to executive producer Bruno Heller give an overview of his view of the series and discuss the supervillains in the show, how they intend to develop the characters over time, and the psychology of Batman and his villains.

And when you’re done with all that, shine your Bat-signals up into the sky in anticipation of Gotham this fall (what, you don’t all have Bat-signals at home? Just me, then) and until next time, Servo Lectio!

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